


Things Not Considered

by Thunderhel



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Drug Abuse, Gen, Overdosing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-22 11:18:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7435272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderhel/pseuds/Thunderhel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bobby he’s not breathing! Oh god, he’s not breathing.”</p>
<p>Of all the things Bob had considered about being a father, there was one major thing he had missed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Not Considered

_“Monsieur Zimmermann! Monsieur Zimmermann!”_

Bob Zimmermann took a lot of things for granted.

He worked hard every day of his life. He had made it to the NHL on nothing but his own merit and gave 100% of everything he had for everything that he did. Bob Zimmermann was not the type of man to believe he could have missed something along the way. 

When he first held his son in his arms he had known it was over, no going back. No Stanly Cup win or MVP trophy was ever going to feel like anything more than empty metal now that he knew what this feeling was. 

_“Monsieur Zimmermann! Call 911! Call 911!”_

Jack had been, right from the very first breath he took, the most important thing in the world to Bob and Alicia Zimmermann. Before he even took his first steps the world was talking about him. Everyone was speculating about what a great hockey player he would grow up to be, and Bob was bursting with pride. His son was going to be the greatest hockey player the NHL had ever seen, and was going to break every record. Bob knew it. 

_“I do not know! I do not know! He was just laying there!”_

The day Jack stopped needing his father to lace up his skates for him was the day everything had really begun. Jack trained hard and he never complained, even as a child. He did every drill and every workout that was sent his way and, more than that, he excelled at them all. Jack Zimmermann ate, breathed, and lived hockey and Bob knew his son was nothing less than hockey royalty, destined to take the throne from him one day. 

Nothing would stand in his way.

_“Bobby he’s not breathing! Oh god, he’s not breathing...”_

The anxiety had been, admittedly, a set back. 

Bob hadn’t understood it at the time, nor had Alicia. Together they had tried, had listened to what the doctors had to say and tried to piece together what Jack wouldn’t. Neither of them had ever faced this sort of demon, hadn’t recognized it for the behemoth that it truly was. Concern was plaguing them both, a nagging worry that seemed deeper seated in Alicia than in himself, but they had brushed it off. 

When they had asked if the pills would take care of it the doctors had all told them yes, but. Yes, but and but and but. Bob hadn’t had time for it. Jack didn’t have time for it. If he was going to go first in the draft in a year there wasn’t time for as much therapy as they wanted. There wasn’t need for someone else to be in charge of the pills. There wasn't an urgency to schedule more appointments.

There wasn’t need and there wasn’t time and Bob tried to remember every excuse he had given, tried to reconcile it with the scene in front of him. 

The housekeeper was still on the phone, choking out directions and an explanation between sobs, but Bob couldn’t hear her. 

Jack was 6’1”. That was what it said on the roster. Jack Laurent Zimmermann. 6’1” and 200 lbs. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 

Jack was 6’1” and he looked so small lying on the bathroom floor, his head in Alicia’s lap as she stroked his hair. Alicia wasn’t a crier, had never been as long as Bob had known her, but now the tears wouldn’t stop. They were rolling down her cheeks as she took staggering gasps, her bright blue eyes locked on their son’s unmoving face. 

_“Jack, Jack, my baby, my boy,”_ she was rambling, nonsense pouring from her as she rocked in minuscule movements on the tiled floor. _“Bob, Bob, oh god, Bob.”_

At his name, Bob finally moved, wrenching himself out of the doorway and collapsing to his knees next to the horrifically still body of his son. He didn’t know what he said, couldn’t recall it later anymore than Alicia was able to, but he remembered grabbing Jack’s arm, the one laying next to the empty pill bottle, and holding it close his chest. He remembered the sting in his eyes and the burn in his throat, though he didn’t remember the tears. 

Bob couldn’t remember what he said to his son’s deaf ears, but he remembered what he thought. He remembered begging and bargaining. He remembered begging to exchange his life for his son’s. He remembered trying to trade every goal he’d ever scored, every win and, God Almighty, especially every Stanly Cup in exchange for his son to keep breathing. 

Bob had taken a lot of things about being a father for granted. 

He had assumed that his son would find a woman that would make his heart beat the same way Bob’s did every time Alicia entered a room. He had assumed he would be confident and determined, just like his father. He had assumed he would be commanding and sharp, just like his mother. He had assumed he would lead his team to the Stanly Cup one day. 

Some nights, deep in the morning hours, Bob would later admit the doubts that occasionally crept in. Wondered, really, if everything they had pushed Jack towards was what he truly wanted. Bob wondered if hockey was where Jack was really meant to be. He wondered if Jack would ever really take enough interest in a woman long enough to fall in love. He wondered if he had done the right thing as a father. 

There was one major thing that Bob Zimmermann had never even considered.

_“Stand back!”_

He moved aside, grabbing Alicia by the shoulders and pulling her as gently as he could out of the way. He watched the scene without breathing. The paramedics brought in the stretcher, four men with official vests and heavy equipment not looking at either Bob or Alicia. Their attention was only for Jack. 

_“I’ve got a pulse but it’s dropping fast.”_

Alicia was trembling, her sobbing reduced to a horrible shuddering, wet, breath that rattled in Bob’s chest as much as her own. Jack’s pallid face was obscured as the medics swarmed, calling to each other as they shifted him onto the stretcher. Someone was poking something into Jack’s arm, and another was strapping a mask to his face and a third began adjusted the straps holding him down. 

_“Are one of you going with him?”_

Alicia was nodding before Bob could move, rushing forward to follow her son, her stuttering speech restarting as she told Jack’s unconscious form how much she loved him. How proud she was of him. How it was all going to be all right. 

Bob would follow only seconds later, grabbing his keys and tearing down the roads at nearly double the speed limits to make it to the hospital. He would hold his wife through the night as they waited. He would break down in the men’s room around 3 AM, sobbing into a blindingly white sink as the florescent lights flickered above him. He would blame himself. Even after the doctors would tell them, around 4AM, that Jack was going to live, Bob would blame himself. He wasn’t going to know what to do when he saw Jack again, was going to be too silent, too stiff, too uncomfortable and those traits would take a few years to sort out. 

But for that moment, as his wife disappeared around the corner and Bob was left alone, slumped against a bathroom wall, he would only think one thing. 

That of everything he had taken for granted, and of all the things he had secretly feared, he had never once, not even for a moment, considered that the title of father could possibly be a temporary one. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at a Check Please fic and this is what I come up with RIP. I don't know, I went looking for a fic like this and couldn't find it so I wrote one myself. [The Tumblr](http://www.dexondefense.tumblr.com/) if you wanna ask me to write something else or complain about this. Or just watch me post crap.


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